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Tag Archive for: The Cribs

Ryan : Hi i’m Ryan, and I’m from the Cribs and here we are in London, at the University.

The first time I remember seeing an Orange amp, I think it was in Weezer’s first record, I opened up the sleeve and there was a picture of all their gear. Their bass player Matt, had this Orange amp and I thought it looked really cool. I became interested at that point because as a kid you end up looking at pictures of gear more than you do using gear because you don’t really have many opportunities. I think I really fantasised about owning one as a school kid. I remember cutting out a photo of an Orange stack from a catalogue and sticking it on my bedroom wall and being like, one day I’m going to get one of these amps.

The first time I got an Orange, was probably in like 2001. It was when the Orange crush came out and I got one for my birthday. I was really excited because there was an Orange amp out there that I could actually afford, it was a way of getting an Orange, on a modest budget. I still really love that amp! I think it was the Crush 30, it became our main recording amp. All our early demos we recorded with the Crush and even now when we go to the studio, I always take the Orange crush with us. We split the signal between my Orange rig and the crush because I think it sounds good on record. I really love that amp!

My main criteria of an amp is that it sounds raunchy, I don’t like it to sound super scooped like you get with most amps. I think a lot of amps are missing something in the mid range and that’s what I liked with Orange. To me they always sounded like the guitar sound of the 70’s records which I always really loved.

A lot of other amps that I’ve used, don’t feedback well and that for me is a really important thing, we use a lot of feedback. I see feedback as one of the more exciting parts of playing guitar as you can’t really control what it is going to do. I always loved the way Orange’s sound when they are being cranked up and the feedback you can get from them and the way you can play the amp in that way. It’s always been an important part of our sound.

My current set up is AD30 that I bought in 2002-2003 maybe, it was the first thing I bought when we got a record deal. Because I thought it would sound like a big Orange Crush and I loved the sound of it. I’ve been using it every since, that’s been my only live amp since 2003-4. In the last couple of years i’ve added that bottom cab and then the Matamp, the Green amp. I used it, all set to bass frequencies, it was mainly when we did the big outdoor stages or the arena shows, I wanted to feel the amp behind me. I’m so happy with my current set up, i’m kind of so used to it, I don’t think I could deal with using anything else at this point.

I tried the Getaway Driver out recently on a new song we have been working on, I thought I would use it as the main pedal for the session. I was really impressed by it, the thing that I find interesting about it, it is definitively a drive pedal, it really has that character but you can get really crazy with it. I was surprised at how dirty that pedal actually gets, usually drives can be a bit tasteful. Which obviously the Getaway Driver can do but it can also do something at the other end of the spectrum which I appreciate.

Ye, it feels cool to be part of the Orange family, when I was a kid I dreamed of owning an Orange. When you become a touring musician it’s easy for you to see the amps you use as the tools of your trade but I still try to contextualise how I felt when I was a kid about the gear and dreamed about owning it. To be a recognised part of the Orange family feels really good, strokes my ego!